Framing the Self in Early Modern Curatorial Strategies of Porcelain Display

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    Abstract

    Early modern porcelain display offers an exceptionally rich field of study for a reflection on the intersecting biographies of people and things. This chapter reconsiders two curatorial strategies – massed display and mounting – practised during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Holland, Germany, and England to frame this boundary-defying material. The conventional framing of massed displays or ‘porcelain rooms’ as a culminating phase in the integration of imported ceramics within European collections imposes an artificial distinction between these strategies. However, in addition to the material parallel between the application of a gilt-metal mount and insertion into a designed interior, a conceptual affinity can be noted in their mutual emphasis on framing. As mounts frame a chosen porcelain vessel, so the structural ornament of a massed display frames those within. Both curatorial strategies can therefore be situated as parallel expressions of a shared emphasis on the constitutive mediation of the foreign and the familiar, self and other, and people and things.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationMaterial Selves
    Subtitle of host publicationObject Biographies and Identities in Motion
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Chapter9
    Pages195-223
    Number of pages29
    ISBN (Electronic)9781350416475, 9781350416451, 9781350416468
    ISBN (Print)9781350416444
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 31 Oct 2024

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